I remember the first time I fired a gun. I was walking with my father and grandfather in the woods behind our house. I must have been about seven or eight. I begged to shoot one of their guns. My grandfather carried his father's LC Williams double-barrel 12 gauge - a gun I still own - an ancient weapon with curved hammers you had to cock and two triggers. They finally agreed to allow me to shoot it.
My grandfather cocked both hammers and handed me the gun. I aimed at a pine cone, and he said to pull both triggers at once. I did. I picked myself off the ground to see both of them doubled over in laughter. I believe they were shocked when I asked if I could shoot it again. They didn't let me, and I have no idea what happened to the pine cone. I tell the anecdote to say that I grew up around and with guns.
I should also say that for a very brief time, somewhere around 1974, I was a member of the NRA. I joined a deer hunting club one year, not knowing the membership included membership in the NRA. I called the club president and told him I had no intention of joining the NRA. He told me I didn't have a choice. It didn't sit well with me even though the NRA’s radicalization hadn't reached the heights that came later, and my one year in the deer club and the NRA was the end of it. Growing up, I never heard a single person mention the 2nd Amendment. It was not an issue. Guns were a normal part of the lives we lived.
In our time, gun advocates supported by the lobbying of the NRA have successfully made gun ownership and the 2nd Amendment hot-button wedge issues. The ramping up of the debate over gun control laws and the 2nd Amendment began in earnest after the passage of the Brady Act in 1994. Despite a 30-year paranoid drumbeat that the government will knock on everyone's door and take their guns, nothing has happened. No one has or is coming to take our guns. Logistical considerations make this impossible, and it has nothing to do with NRA lobbying and militia bravado or intimidation. The government can't accomplish confiscation. It is logistically impossible.
The majority, in truth, all citizens in America abhor the gun violence that has become commonplace. The dividing line comes when we recommend gun control laws. 90% of Americans support expanded background checks and extended waiting periods for purchase. The overwhelming will of the people doesn't matter. Even the most straightforward, most basic law that does not affect the guns already owned faces opposition from the right. The "right to bear arms" is viewed as the right to buy arms without a background check. It seems to be the extreme stance, not a law that would expand background checks to purchase a firearm.
It's easy to understand why gun owners and defenders of the 2nd Amendment feel threatened. They are a minority. They feel as if they and their rights are under siege. They must defend themselves. They are under assault. These ideas originate from their conversations, their leaders' rhetoric, the NRA, and their self-realized prophecy of doom and civil war. Let's be clear. These people aren't evil; they aren't bad people. Most are citizens who work, raise families, pay taxes, and support their communities. Let's be clear, again. They are wrong; they have been "taken in" - to use a colloquial phrase - by the fearmongers and propagandists of supremacist militia groups and the NRA, whose leaders use and abuse their dues and support to feed a massive war chest of pleasure and personal excess.
A step in the right direction is straightforward. We should do the easy things first. Pass laws that expand and extend background checks. Create a national database of the mentally ill that is accessible to licensed firearm dealers. The same national database should include felons convicted of violent crimes, persons convicted of domestic abuse, and others. Gun advocates say that criminals will still have guns, which is true; they will have them. Monitoring felons and the mentally ill to make guns more problematic for them to obtain needs a focus equal to, if not stronger than, monitoring or restricting the sale of firearms to citizens who can easily pass a background check.
It hurts nothing to have a gun owner registry. We have this already through hunting licenses and concealed weapons permits. Firearm dealers are licensed and heavily monitored; perhaps gun owners should be too. If we set aside our anger and conflict and quit being manipulated by politicians who use wedge issues to divide us and gain votes, we can choose the sane, common-sense policies and laws that could make the changes we need.